It is Saturday, November 9, 2024.  6:22 PM.  Its pretty warm out for a New England November, so I am sitting in the backyard with some candles and its already been dark outside for an hour.  Been spending more time writing lately (typing as opposed to my preferred hand written format), because it’s more easily accessible than other therapeutic forms right now.

Been working on a piece of writing for a while about space, or, all the spaces we’ve inhabited throughout our lives and what gave us meaning from these spaces. I couldn't finish it (or maybe this post is what it turned into, idk), because I ended up with too many questions instead.

Is the meaning of spaces derived from the people who we inhabited them with? Was it the decor/colors/layout/structure? Was it the smell? Usually when I time travel to various spaces I’ve inhabited, I remember the vibe more than anything- and I think for me the things that constitute a vibe are a combination of these sensory input: the sounds of daily living (what that door sounded like, what were the outdoor noises that were always present), the quality of light at various times of day/seasons, the colors around me. But I wonder what constitutes this vibe for other people since our internal experiences are all so different.  For example, I've heard other people talk a lot about smells of spaces past having a profound effect on them when revisited or encountered later in life. 

I feel like most ppl don’t really choose where they end up - it just happens as a matter of circumstance. But some ppl do hav a choice to an extent, or maybe at various times in life. So what are the differences/similarities between these two scenarios? And how does that impact how we interact with our current spaces?
When someone doesn’t have a space to call their own (especially against their own wishes), and/or: never did, how does this impact them and their internal world? Or what about people who are violently and forcibly removed from their spaces? The ppl of Palestine come to mind immediately.  Also ppl in countries of empire like here where ppl lose their homes because of WaRz of cAPitAL™ R-US ongoing.  Or this morning I saw a post on the working class history ig about the ppl of the Chagos Archipelago, who were all removed from their homes to make way for a US military base to occupy that land instead.  What does that do to a person's internal world? Furthermore, how do these internal worlds then get reflected into the collective experience of their communities, and then our world at large?

I started pondering spaces when I found this footage in a box of my old videotapes.  This video is from a trip my family and I took to Poland back in 2004. I was 17 years old and we had been living in the US together as a family since 1992. I had visited as a child, but this was my first trip back during my teen years. We were clearing out our apartment in Warsaw because it was being sold. I had decided that I would be a filmmaker, so I was obsessed with filming everything ever on my precious miniDV camcorder. But I also knew I would never see this space again, and being weird about spaces I’ve inhabited- I had to record everything and save every little treasure I could possibly fit in my suitcase. Please excuse baby-Alex's poor analysis of economics towards the end lol, I was v young!

This apartment was about 180 square feet - but it contained so many lives within its walls.  When I was born, there were 9 of us living there: me and my sister, our mom and dad, my mom's brother and his wife plus their kid (my older cousin), and two of my grandparents.  It was a common practice to put your bed away every morning to make space for daily living.  Lots of people in cities lived in apartments and situations like this so I did not think it was strange until I moved to New Jersey.  The town I grew up in there had lots of mansions (not an exaggeration) and this style of American excess was very much normalized.  It felt very weird going over your friend's house and seeing how starkly different your spaces were.  Their moms were home to pick them up from school.  They had their own rooms and even one just for the activity of watching movies.  There were cookie jars, staircases, and entire basements to do whatever you and your co-inhabitants wanted to do.  I was too young to verbalize what I felt, but I think this was the first time I became aware of the concept of class?  As a child, I was wildly embarrassed about having friends over or sharing details about my home life.  Luckily I discovered punk at some point between 6-8th grade and made the necessary adaptation to stop giving a fuck lol. Bless. I am still grateful for all the stress this has spared my future self, and is why I continue to say *long live rocknroll*.

I spent my childhood being very confused by my external surroundings maybe because nobody explained to my child self the How&Why of what we were all experiencing. For example, I used to think there was something inherently wrong with my family which must have been why we didn’t have mansions (lmao ???). Instead, I often retreated to my internal world for comfort and support and distraction. I’m actually thankful for this because I still do this as an adult. I think it’s called having a vivid imagination and it’s one of my favorite parts about human consciousness. It comes in handy a lot as my physical body ages and becomes more difficult to inhabit as a space itself.

Living in a country where the acquisition of wealth, power and status, even at the cost of other human lives, was considered normal and even encouraged as a “survival strategy” is still weird and definitely one of many reasons america is so hopelessly fckd & shameful.

I'm curious to hear what other ppl's first conceptions of space were and their reflections on how that impacts their relationship with spaces now.  I imagine it's wildly different for everyone because everyone adapts to their situations in various ways.  In my immediate family alone, I noticed that some ppl adapted by adopting a nomadic way of living while others adapted to being hopeless homebodies (me, lol).  Anyways, I need to have a yard sale soon, because current adaptation requirements are demanding that I interact with less stuff.  (I am nervous because I hope it doesn't require any bad decor.)

It’s Saturday August 3, 2024. It’s 5:30am and I absolutely wish I wasn’t awake right now but I don’t really have a choice in the matter. I’ve been battling a stubborn low blood sugar that has been haunting me all night. It’s gotten to the point where the fake hunger pangs of the low blood sugar have merged with the real hunger pangs (because I’m legit hungry for breakfast now) and the combo makes my stomach painful. Got a busy day ahead and was hoping to maximalize on rest tonight but ***U CANT ALWAYS GET WHAT U WAAAANT***

Tossing in bed, I kept thinking about that 1979 movie The Warriors, which was a huge fav for me growing up and still is. I won’t go into it, but there is one particular scene I am fixating on right now: When the meeting of all the gangs in NYC is held, a leader from a prominent gang proposes a city-wide truce among all the gangs. He even boldly suggests that they far outnumber the cops- and in their numbers combined- could realistically hold power over the city alone.  But first- he says they would all have to get over this petty business of feuding over “pieces of turf”.

My mind reels at the thought of concepts such as nations and borders. Like don’t get me wrong- cool things come from other countries. There’s things like different languages, cuisines, fashion, art, music, ideas ETC But these aspects of culture have been around as long as humans began to evolve and they are more regional differences to me than anything else. Regional differences make sense because depending on where you live- you deal with different shit.  It is natural and logical that eventually the regional culture of that space will reflect this. I’m sure winters in Siberia are tough- which probably in turn affects what people eat and dress like when they live there. Conversely- northern New Jersey promotes a lot of sad home decor choices, big hair, and even bigger nails. (Still unsure why but we’ll get to the bottom of it someday!)

Maybe it’s less apparent to americans, but people from around the world, especially dense regions of empire such as europe, have probably noticed from history class that borders don’t really hold any real importance at all. They are completely fluid and especially arbitrary. They change all the time, usually at the whim of some ruling man and his silly, petty turf wars. When I went to that polish saturday school growing up, we studied the history and geography of Poland a lot. I found it so hard to concentrate on any of this, not just because of undiagnosed ADHD, but because it was hard to care or remember about all the details involving how that one country was carved up, divided, erased, reinstated constantly over the course of a 1000 years. Just endless dudes drawing new squiggly lines over old squiggly lines after every feud with some other dudes. I could not care less. Also, I refuse to believe that all of these people lacked the imagination to do something better with their time and energy while on this planet.

So what is a country? And what is patriotism if not thinly veiled nationalism? When you kill in the name of a country or a border- what are you actually doing? Are you truly defending a people or your dear beloved home? Or are you simply protecting the capital of the ruling class of that country (they’re the ones who sent you to do their dirty work, after all).

I recently met a person who expressed confusion and anger at the current state of politics in the USA. Whenever this conversation comes up these days- heads are hung low and shaken from side to side, almost as if to rid the afflicted of the demons that accompany these thoughts inside their brains. But I heard remarks that it truly shocks me to hear from any reasonable adult living in the USA today. They said - I can’t believe how far downhill this country went. They said it used to be a good country- but now it’s bad. (This was the expressed sentiment anyways. I have the memory of a peanut and can’t remember their exact words used, forgive me.)

Whenever people comment about the sadness of America’s decline, I do get annoyed (to say the least). That is because these comments usually operate under the assumption that this is a legitimate country that was organically founded. That it deserves to exist. That this land promotes freedom and democracy and that you can actually encounter these concepts at work here. I am not a historian AT ALL, promise youuu, but I don’t have to dig too far to see that this country was in fact founded upon genocide of the indigenous populations, slavery, coercion/extraction/exploitation, war, and greed.  And nothing has changed much - the plantations where enslaved people labored for hundreds of years turned into modern-day for-profit prison systems and the laws of this land still criminalize poverty- the same poverty that the law has created itself.  Those at the bottom of the economic ladder will always be abused and extracted from first. This land was taken from people who tended to it for a very very long time. This country is a settler colonial state and simply put - should not exist. Should any “border” exist though? Men have fought over these petty lines since the beginning of time and all over the world. Every country was founded on the spilled blood of regular folks who are just trying to survive their small blip in time here. What a waste of human potential and precious human life.

Would you ever build a house for yourself or even future generations of your loved ones on an unsteady ground? Can you construct a solid foundation when inhabiting quicksand or a swamp? I don’t think these foundations will hold. The house will fall down and eventually nature will swallow the ruins whole. 

 I truly believe if people began engaging with their inner artist, their inner child, and employed some creative imagination in a collective manner - I do truly believe we could overcome these obstacles to a thriving human civilization. But instead, we veer in the opposite direction - we are told to remove ourselves from the vulnerability of the self and others. Whichever way it goes in the long run- a quick scan of human history will prove several facts, an important one being that: empires always FALL. I will celebrate the fall of this particular empire rather than mourn it.

“The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another! We have been unable to see the TRUTH, because we have been fighting for ten square feet of GROUND. Our TURF, our little piece of turf…

THATS CRAP, BROTHERS!” 

- Cyrus in The Warriors (1979) 

I have a complicated relationship with perceiving the art of DJ’ing.  Like many slavs of my generation, my first encounter with a DJ was at a Polish wedding as a kid.  I wrote them off immediately lol.  I grew up wanting to play music on electric guitar and the musicians I grew up around typically looked down on DJ’ing and electronic music. 

I did not encounter DJ’s again until my early 20’s. I had just moved to Philly and was desperate to find any work.  I ended up cobbling together a living from a roster of completely different jobs: managing a boutique pet supply store, mailing scientific data for the linguistics department of UPenn, and by night - DJ’ing the lighting at a few different electronic nightclubs in Philly & Atlantic City, NJ.

I have no idea how or why I had any of those jobs - but I distinctly remember the events leading up to the last one.  I was scouring craigslist ads for most of 2010-2011, looking for any gig that paid as much money as possible per hour.  I saw a listing seeking a “female lighting operator” at an undisclosed nightclub in Cesar’s casino in Atlantic City, NJ.  It paid $300 per night, in cash.  That was nearly my entire monthly rent - so you know I had to jump at it.  At this time in life, my main priority was having band practice at any available time with the garage-punk band I played drums in.  

I had been a lighting operator in high school, as a hardcore member of our school’s theatre program.  I was such a nerd about it too, and ended up being the co-head of the lighting crew my senior year.  I was only in it to be part of the tech theatre crew because that was where all the freaks and weirdos could be found.  I had no idea that this random experience would lead me to pursue a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking and qualify me for life-saving jobs in my adult future.  

While seeking work as a college student at emerson in Boston, I was employed by their blackbox theatre doing sound and lighting work.  This helped me out a lot because it paid fairly well at the time for on-campus jobs (and my only qualification for it was my experience with my high school tech theatre crew).  After I graduated, I worked full time as a digital content creator for a regional labor union while performing whatever side work I could to save up as much money as possible (in order to move to Philly and pick up the drums).  One of these side jobs was picking up shifts at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, MA doing lighting work.  I still remember one of the members of Youth Brigade encouraging me to use the green lighting gels for their set, when briefly discussing their lighting needs before the show.  Green gels were always a hard sell, but being a huge fan of this lighting, I always pushed for it lol.  Bless Youth Brigade forever for that validating opportunity!

I went for an “interview” in Atlantic City after hearing back about that craigslist post seeking a “female lighting operator” in 2010 or 2011.  The first thing I asked was “why are you seeking a ‘female’ lighting operator, specifically?”  My boss told me bluntly: “because women won’t threaten my job.”  IM SURE YOU CAN IMAGINE HOW *FUN* IT WAS WORKING FOR THIS MAN.  Probably a sociopath - he seemed to have a monopoly on outfitting local area clubs with their tech needs.  He set up all the lighting fixtures/moving lights, LED mood lighting throughout the club, fog and haze machines, confetti canons, and even dictated the “motion graphics” needs of the spaces through any TV monitors.  Everything was controlled by the “lighting DJ” from the DJ booth on a series of boards and monitors.  He made sure to use proprietary systems every step of the way to weed out any people seeking to put him out of work as a result of mastering his rig.  The man had no artistic taste to speak of and any dealing with him was a massive struggle.  But the job paid what I needed, so I bit my tongue and showed up on time.  Some random photos I found on my computer from work then:

The club in Atlantic City mainly played “top 40 hits” (usually for bachelor/bachelorette parties) and the DJ’s were typically an hour late for their shift (during which we would just play an iPod mix until they got there and patrons typically couldn’t tell the difference).  Because the lighting DJ (me) stood next to the real DJ, people would often mistake me for the audio DJ. “PLAY THAT LADY GAGA SONG I LUV” some drunk bro would yell at me, before crumpling up a $5 bill and throwing it over the plexiglass at my head.  (I picked it up afterward and threw it back at his head.)  “I’m NOT the DJ!!!” I would yell back with some misguided pride.

My friends and I would laugh at club-goers and their chosen music.  See ancient screenshots from facebook circa 2011:

I’m not sure when this started happening, but I eventually found myself looking forward to certain parts of the night when I knew my “favorites” would come on.  The closer we got to midnight, I knew there was a good chance that Steve Aoki’s remix of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happniess” featuring MGMT/Ratatat would be coming on.  A catchy tune about addiction, mental health, and night terrors, though I suspect it is about a lot more than that.  As the track culminated towards the inevitable beat drop, I would hit the blackout button causing all the moving lights to turn off.  When the sweet relief of the drop finally arrived (the one just after the 5-minute mark on the track), I hit the sparkling strobes.  They were programmed to “twinkle” above the dance floor, mimicking a thunder/lightning storm occurring somewhere in a void.  The energy I felt from everyone in the club seemed to permeate every single body, and over time it seeped into mine as well.  I didn’t get it before, but I suddenly understood the role of the DJ as the LITERAL HEARTBEAT of a DANCE FLOOR of living, breathing humans.  What a fucking privilege and honor.  

One particularly terrifying night at the club in Atlantic City, I saw firsthand what the DJ meant to everyone.  It was either 2011 or 2012, and all the wealthy investors of the club were visiting for one night only to see how we were doing.  Of course this was the one night we had technical difficulties - the sound kept cutting out!  Me, having plenty lighting experience but VERY LITTLE practical audio experience - could not figure out why the sound kept cutting out this night.  At one crucial point - the sound cut out for long enough to drop the beat of the song for UNCOMFORTABLY LONG.  It was close to midnight - so the floor was packed and the drunken crowd was PISSED.  The longer the sound was out - the angrier they got.  Until one blessed moment - where someone in the crowd started singing.  “You- you got what I NEED” he yelled.  “CUZ U SAY IM JUST A FRIEND, CUZ U SAY IM JUST A FRIEND”.  Suddenly, the whole dance floor started chanting the words with him, rendering Biz Markie’s song “Just a Friend”.  My manager was flailing around me (a suit-and-tie guy that absolutely wanted to murder me on most days, but especially in that moment) as I scrambled to find out why the speakers kept cutting out.  I later found out that the power plug for the speakers was hanging out of its socket due to the rocking vibrations from the bass output.  (Whenever I am troubleshooting sound problems at a live show these days, I now instinctually always check the power connections first out of this learned experience lol).  I couldn’t work that location for this job for the next few months because that is how pissed the managers were at me (the owners were there that night, observing us from the VIP table, after all, and all our asses were on the line).  I stuck to shifts only at the other two clubs which were both in Philly.  It was fine after I dyed my hair - “Don’t worry, they won’t remember you’re the same girl” my shitty boss reassured me at my first gig back in Atlantic City.

When I moved back to Boston after getting sick, I started going to any show I could find.  My musical taste was no longer loyal to any one genre and it never would be again.  If it was local and I had the time to go, I would absolutely check out that improvisational experimental show or the techno night in some basement, I truly did not give a fck.  For the first time in my life - I actually went out dancing.

Over time, I was exposed to incredible DJ’s/producers that continue to inspire me daily.  DJ Haram, Dee Diggs, DJ Cobra B, just to name a few.  

My life partner of the past 5 years also happens to be a DJ and I express gratitude for my luck every day.  Whenever I am hopelessly sad, all I have to do is hang outside his bedroom door or window long enough to catch some sounds.  Instant healing.  If you also struggle with your mental health on a daily basis, I highly recommend finding a DJ and some room to dance in.

Wish everyone knew how REAL this song is/was lol